When Your DVDs Become Mobile... (1/2)

Spb Software House Mobile DVD v1.0

By: Marc A. Foumberg | Date: 4-Dec-06 | Comments

INTRODUCTION

Our Windows Mobile devices are great for taking movies on the go. Converting movies and DVD to a more pocketable format can be a bit of chore if you don't have the right program. Spb Software has a brand-new solution, and we're one of the first to take a thorough look at a tool that you may find very useful. The new program, Mobile DVD, promises to deliver a solution to meet all of your needs. So is Spb Mobile DVD a box office hit? Grab some popcorn and read on to find out!

WHAT'S HOT

Spb breaks into mobile movie conversion with its initial release of Mobile DVD. This PC application offers numerous options and features to obtain the best quality movie while promoting ease of use. Here's a list of some:

Convert an entire movie or a portion
Output format in WMV or XVID
Select from 20 or 25 FPS (Frames Per Second)
Zoom mode: Fit to screen and full screen options
Select from QVGA, VGA or Square Screen output
Easy wizard interface allows users to get started right away

SETUP

The installer for Spb Mobile DVD is pretty straight forward. Read and accept the license agreement then proceed!

After the install has completed you will then be presented with the Activation dialog. For activation, your PC will require an online internet connection. If the internet is not available to you, there is an activation by phone method.

PRODUCT FEATURES

Getting started with DVD Mobile is fast and easy. You can step through the process of converting a movie, using a wizard interface. This takes allot of guess work out and even new comers can convert a movie with ease.

Simple choices and organized dialogs help speed you through the process. To start out, simply choose to convert a DVD disk from your DVD-ROM drive, or convert a video file from your hard drive. Mobile DVD can import AVI (DivX/XVid), MPEG and WMV formats. To convert a retail DVD movie you will need a DVD Decoder such as Cyberlink PowerDVD or InterVideo WinDVD.

For this review we are converting the Aviator from a DVD disk. Wait for the DVD's main menu, select playback options such as language or subtitles on/off and click next.

From the next screen we can either convert the entire movie, a selected portion of the movie or a single chapter. All of these options are available in a drop down box. To convert a portion of the movie, click the play button and use the "Mark Begin" and "Mark End" buttons to set the start and stop positions. For this review we opted to convert the entire movie.

On the next screen we can set the following options: Output format - WMV 20 Frames per second, WMV 25 Frames per second and XVid 25 Frames per second. Screen resolution - QVGA 320x240, VGA 640x480, Square screens 480x480 and 240x240. Aspect ratio - 4:3, 16:9 and 2.35:1 (depending on the movie, not all aspect ratio options may be present).

The Zooming mode will offer you the following choices: Small (fit to screen), Medium (Best fit) and Big (Full screen). The Medium zoom mode is my first choice since it allows to fill more of my screen while not losing too much of the original screen format. In the previous screenshots you can see the difference between Zooming small and medium.

In this screen you can see the Zooming mode set to Big (Full screen). You loose allot of the original movie, but can achieve full screen video without altering the aspect ratio.

Now we are ready to select the video quality and see a real time preview of how the movie will appear. This is a great feature since the preview will update according to the quality setting you choose. Your available options here are: video quality - Poor, Normal, Best or Custom. If you choose custom, you can either specify a fit to file size or manually set the quality percentage. This is useful if you want to fine tune the output to a specific bitrate or file size.

Clicking next will display a dialog where you can choose where to save your converted video. You can save it to your hard drive, removable memory card (if present) or right to your mobile device. Conversion times will vary depending on your PC hardware, video source and destination. We have seen an average of 3.6x conversion speeds.

For an idea on the size of the output files, here's a matrix for The Aviator, which has a run time of 170 minutes:

Format	Size (MB)
XVid, 25 FPS, 320x240, Best Quality	529
XVid, 25 FPS, 320x240, Normal Quality	392
XVid, 25 FPS, 320x240, Poor Quality	254
WMV, 25 FPS, 320x240, Best Quality	522
WMV, 25 FPS, 320x240, Normal Quality	385
WMV, 25 FPS, 320x240, Poor Quality	247
WMV, 20 FPS, 320x240, Best Quality	479
WMV, 20 FPS, 320x240, Normal Quality	350
WMV, 20 FPS, 320x240, Poor Quality	218